


Strange Meeting

by WinterSwallow



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Duel of the Fates, Gen, Mortis - Freeform, The Rise of Skywalker - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:14:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22564582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinterSwallow/pseuds/WinterSwallow
Summary: Ben Solo gets the fate that he deserves.Both of them.
Kudos: 5





	Strange Meeting

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired after seeing The Rise of Skywalker and reading the summary of The Duel of the Fates, Colin Treverrow's lost draft of Episode IX, which posited a similar outcome but very different fate for Ben Solo. To be honest, I didn't care for either version, but somewhere in the rubble of these various versions there is a good story.
> 
> This story in particular borrows some elements some elements from The Rise of the Skywalker, but also Duel of the Fates, particularly Kylo trading his obsession with Rey for a near religious pursuit of the heart of the dark side, Mortis and immortality. As you can imagine, it didn't work out great for him. If you haven't read it, summaries can be found online, but obviously don't need to have seen this imaginary movie to follow along.

_“I am the enemy you killed, my friend._

_I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned_

_Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed._

_I parried; but my hands were loath and cold."_

_\- Wilfred Owen_

There are no people in this place.

The temple has no priests or guardians. It has no worshippers of any kind.

If there were, the man in the mask would have killed them.

And yet, there is a stranger sitting on the temple steps.

He is a young man, or maybe old and there is something about him that is strange, familiar, as if it is a face that the man in the mask knew once, long ago.

“Ah,” says the stranger, looking up. “I see.”

This place plays tricks on the man in the mask, tests him, prods at his soul to assess if he is worthy. He sees his father at times, and his mother too, rarely. And the damnable Luke Skywalker will not leave him in peace.

And-- the scavenger girl.

Sometimes he thinks he sees her in the distance. Sometimes he dreams of her, though he never really sleeps.

No doubt this man is a test too. But he has faced many tests.

He draws his saber.

The silence here has a weight to it. It swallows up the tread of his boots and even the reassuring hum of his blade is dulled, as if what he hears is only the echo and not the sound itself.

“Who are you? What brings you to this place?” His voice aches and cracks. His saber slavers and hisses at the stranger’s throat.

The man looks up at him, but does not rise or shy away from the blade. There is no fear in his eyes. “Kylo Ren?” he says. 

“W-what?”

“You are Kylo Ren.”

Of course, yes, that is his name. He has not forgotten it. That would be absurd. But it is a long time since the man in the mask was called that name by anyone. The ghosts call him by another, hated name. “Y-yes. I am Kylo Ren. What do you want?”

The man makes no reply. His garments are plain. Not the garments of a jedi or a sith, nor a uniform of any kind. A rebel perhaps?

Or just a shade.

“Where are we?” asks the man, gazing at the spires of the temple.

The temple is never the same twice. Sometimes its towers are as tall as the sky, and sometimes it is squat and wide as crab, half-buried in the sand. Sometimes it is a palace of endless infinite rooms and sometimes if he stretches out his arms his fingers can touch the walls on both sides. Only the statues stay the same, seven soldiers lining the temple steps, their faces blank and solemn.

“You stand in the cradle of the gods,” he tells the stranger, “And at the heart of the force. This is Mortis.”

The stranger tugs on an earlobe. “Mortis,” he says, as if trying to remember a dream. “There were stories, from when I was little.”

The man in the mask recalls a woman’s voice, and immense power wrapping around him as gently as a warm summer zephyr, and stories of his mighty grandfather, taking hold of such power that even the gods knelt.

“A place between darkness and light,” says the stranger. “I see.”

Like a dynamo picking up speed, the man in the mask feels his anger awaken. His saber sparks and snaps in his hand. “This place is mine! The secrets it holds, its powers, _are mine_. No filthy thief is going to take them from me.”

The man leans back, as if there isn’t a blade ready to cut him down, as if he is only seeking a more comfortable position. “I don’t think we’re looking for the same thing,” he says, as if this somehow excuses his trespass.

“I’ll kill you,” the man in the mask spits, “I have killed everyone else who stood in my way.”

“Yes.”

“I will kill you too.”

“I suppose you can try,” the stranger shakes his head.

He swings his blade down in a deathstrike.

But the stranger has vanished.

*

There is no day in this place.

So, the man in the mask does not know how many days it has been since he came to the temple. How many days he has spent unravelling its riddles, so he might finally manifest his destiny.

It cannot be long, though it feels like forever.

There was a war once, he remembers, and he was part of it. A war that had rent open galaxies like a knife tearing through carpet. He remembers how much it had seemed to matter to him then. How he had felt each small death as it happened, like a fresh cut on his skin, painful and satisfying all at once.

But it has all paled now to insignificance. A small war full of small people. How can such a thing matter against the arc of eternity? The dark side whispered his destiny to him. That if he were to undertake this pilgrimage it would raise him as it did the old gods. He need only be patient.

The silence of the temple has freed him from meaningless concerns. He feels no pain, no grief but his own. Every thread of connection that kept him tied down and suffocating in the mud of humanity is snapped. In the silence he can focus on higher things.

Yet the dead torment him still. His master places long, freezing fingers on his shoulder and whispers sweet cruelties in his ear. The children in the burning temple cry out to him for help. His uncle watches silently with mocking eyes.

And the stranger leans against the door of the temple, his posture languid and infuriating in its unconcern, as if this were some thieves’ den or cantina to be scouted and not the core of all creation.

“It’s empty,” says the stranger.

“It’s not empty,” he snaps back from his place on the floor. “It holds secrets untold. _You_ are just too dull to perceive the truth.”

He had known doubt himself once, when he first came to the temple. When he had found the altar bare except for dust and his uncle’s ghost had whispered its poison that he had been unworthy, that he would always be unworthy, he had faltered, believed that perhaps the dark had forsaken him much as the light had.

But that had been just a moment of weakness, a flicker in his faith. His ascension is assured. His blood sings of it. His sacrifice assures it. He need only unpick the mysteries of this temple and he will receive his boon and the hole inside him, the vast and hungry void, will finally close.

The stranger picks an imaginary speck of dust from the door frame. “It’s empty.”

*

There is no night in this place.

But he thinks he sees a beacon in the mountains, shining with an otherworldly light. Perhaps there he will find the godhead, the secret to his ascension.

He sets out and walks for countless hours, until his feet bleed, but in the end finds only impenetrable obsidian walls and silence.

When he returns to the temple the man is there again, skipping pebbles across the courtyard. The temple has grown in stature, become a ziggurat of silver basalt. In the temple’s sacred chamber, a thousand-piece holochron hangs above the altar, clicking like a great spider.

He glares at the stranger, who had followed him into the temple. “Did you touch it?”

The stranger shrugs, as if the topic bores him. “Why would I? I told you, we’re in search of different things.”

The man in the mask snatches up the holochron. “If you touch it, I’ll kill you and everything you love.”

The stranger shrugs. “I don’t think either of us is going to find what we’re looking for in this place.”

He begins to unpuzzle the holochron and the stranger takes a seat, cross-legged beside him, too close for comfort.

“I miss food,” says the stranger, almost conversationally, when some time has passed. “I never used to even think about it… before. Eating was just a function, necessary. But now I catch myself thinking of hartfruit and grilled blood sausage and goozeberry pastries all the time.” He rubs the back of his neck. “I know my mind should be on higher matters.” 

“Yes,” says the man in the mask. The stranger’s chatter is disturbing his focus.

“Don’t you think its interesting?”

“No,” He wonders what shape the holochron is supposed to take. It resembles no shape he can think of.

“After all, it’s the dark side that is supposed to be about embracing want and hedonism and material things. Why is it only now that I’m thinking of food?” the stranger continues.

“I don’t know. Perhaps you’re a fool.” He twists a silver piece. A moment ago _there were no silver pieces._

“I never really thought about it before,” says the stranger and adds in a softer voice. “Evidently.”

The man in the mask ignores him.

“Do you eat?” asks the stranger, almost hopefully.

“No,” says the man in the mask. “The force sustains me.”

The stranger tilts his head to the side. “There is no force in this place,” he says. “Not for you or for me.” He stretches long legs. “The force has a will, and it has chosen to forsake us.” He walks to the door of the temple and looks back. “Even you must know that by now. Even you must know why.”

When the stranger is gone, the man in the mask turns back to his work, but the holochron has shattered to a thousand pieces on the floor.

*

There is no sun in this place.

And the stranger is not always calm. Sometimes he is so angry that it is almost frightening.

The punch drops the man in the mask to the ground.

“You’re a fool.” The stranger bellows. “You’re a damn fool. You set the galaxy aflame so you could wallow in your own dissatisfaction, because you were afraid no one would love you as much as you loved them. The galaxy burned and its people with it because you couldn’t see past your own stupid misery. You are a disgrace.”

The stranger sucks his bleeding knuckles where they caught on the edge of the mask. He is panting.

Under his mask the man pants too. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he spits.

“ _Oh don’t I?_ ”

He feels his fists clench. “My parents-”

“Your parents gave their lives for you. They just wanted you to be safe and happy and good and not the murderous, self-absorbed little _pill_ you turned out to be.”

“They were afraid of me.”

“ _They were right to be,”_ he bellows. “You destroyed everything they loved – everything you loved. Their life’s work is ashes because of _you_.” 

“No. Snoke–”

“Snoke didn’t put anything into your head that wasn’t already in there. Oh, he flattered your ego and made you stupid, grand promises and you, animal that you are, wanted to believe them. But Snoke never made you do anything you didn’t want to. He didn’t force you to turn a blind eye as millions died. He didn’t send you out on that gantry. He didn’t mandate all that death and destruction.”

“It was necessary.”

“It was _evil._ And somewhere, deep down in the putrid recesses of your rotten soul you know that. Which makes it worse!”

“I never –”

“You still are, you sanctimonious evil bastard. You are a plague. You destroy everything you touch.”

“ _Shut up!”_ He crawls into a crouch.

“And if she wasn’t so strong, if she wasn’t that much _stronger than you,_ you would have destroyed Rey-”

“ _Don’t say that name!_ ”

“Rey! Rey! Rey! Rey! Can’t you even bear to think of her now? You loved her. You loved her so much you would have taken everything she was and destroyed it. You loved her so much you would have consigned her to a fate worse than death.”

“No, I _died for her.”_ The words rush out of him before he can consider him. And once he does it feels like the ground falls away, like he is standing atop a narrow spire and the gulf in his understanding is vast and dark and full of terrors. Is he not the master of his fate? Is it not his destiny to bring the dark side into balance with the light? 

“You died for yourself.” The stranger doesn’t seem to know or to care how his whole reality is swaying on the tip of a pin. He keeps lashing out at him. “Just the same as you lived for yourself.”

“No.”

“Yes. You’re a coward and a fool and you are dreaming if you ever thought someone as strong and as brave and as good as Rey-”

“ _Stop saying that name!”_

The man peers down at him. “A name is nothing to be afraid of, Ben.”

He tackles the stranger around the knees. They both fall heavily and wrestle, all knees and elbows scrabbling for purchase as they roll around like children, at the sacred heart of eternity.

The stranger’s head snaps back at the flat prow of his mask strikes his nose. Blood begins to gush from his nose. They scuffle and kick and scratch.

Until both are exhausted.

*

There is no sleep in this place

But there are dreams.

Sometimes he fears being alone in the dark.

And in his weakness, he seeks out the stranger and even bears his company for a time.

The stranger has no respect for the man in the mask’s pride. He listens to his grandest schemes, his greatest accomplishments and seems to dismiss them, as if the man in the mask were a child or an imbecile. His greatest sins only seem to bore him and he greatest triumphs to disgust him. 

He hates it, hates the man and how he reminds him insidiously of his father. He cannot help thinking of crawling into his father’s lap in the bucket seat of the Falcon to tell him of his nightmares as a boy and of writing long letters filled with dreams and fear during long nights at the academy.

“I killed her parents,” he tells the stranger, trying desperately to provoke a response.

“Whose?”

“Th-the girl. The scavenger girl.”

The stranger looks surprised and sounds certain when he says, “You didn’t.”

“I did! I slaughtered them like pigs. They squealed as they died. I remember.” It’s engraved in his memory, as painful and delicious a memory as the loss of his first baby tooth.

“You didn’t. You could not have. You were 16. You were safe at the temple, under your uncle’s care. We – _you_ never killed anyone before the night the temple burned. Master Luke would have seen it in you. You could never hide something like that from him. Not even the time you kept a maglion cub in a box under your bed.”

“ _Luke!_ He’s a fool. _”_ But his rage gutters as soon as it sparks, a match in the wind.

“You could never hide _anything_ from him.”

“No, you’re wrong. I killed them!”

“You didn’t.”

“I must have. If I killed them then she must hate me. If she hates me then she is bound to me. If she is bound to me then she can never leave me. No, it is better that it is the way I say. I killed them and because of it she will carry a piece of me around with her always. I will always be with her.” He sits back, satisfied. This at least, he has. This they cannot take from him.

The stranger rubs at his eyes with the heels of his hands and says, “The truth is I want that too. I’m afraid she’ll forget me, even though there is nothing worthwhile for her to remember. And I want to be with her, even though I know I don’t deserve her.” He scratches the back of his head. “It scares me to think what I might give up just to see her again.”

He squeezes the man in the mask’s shoulder. The sensation is strange and terrifying. “We are in good company, I suppose.”

*

There is no time here.

And yet he grows weary. Maybe he has been here just a day. Maybe for hundreds of years. Maybe he has always been here and the other world, the one of connection and life and vital energy, is just a dream. Maybe he is dreaming even now.

“When will I become a god?” he asks the stranger. He has come to rely on the stranger who seems to know, seems to remember so much more than him. The dream of his other life is fraying now, as dreams do, and he cannot recall names, faces - only feelings - only dread.

“You are not a god,” says the stranger. “You are a man.”

He is impatient with these riddles. “I will _become_ a god. I will ascend as the ancients did. I will discover the secrets of this temple. I will rip them out with my bare hands, with my teeth if I have to, and I will take my rightful place. It is my birth right.”

“You will never be a god.”

“I _will._ I gave up everything for this power. It is only fair.”

“No. You gave away too much. You gave things that you shouldn’t have. Things that were not yours to give.”

The feeling grows within him. Once it might have been anger. Now he feels is just a powerful numbness, as if the void inside himself is ready to swallow the world outside. “What do you know about it? I am owed this. I gave everything I had to the dark side. I sold my soul.”

He lashes out and this time the back of his fist connects with the man’s face. He goes sprawling.

The man pushes himself up. “Yes,” he says.

“You’re a fool. Or a shade. Some trick sent to lead me from the path. I suppose my uncle sent you, did he? Well, Skywalker is a fool and you are a fool and I will be a god.”

“Ben,” the stranger shakes his head sadly, “You are a long time dead. We both are.”

“No.”

“Yes. I’ve told you this so many times, and you never believe me. But you told me the story once. You gave your life for her. I don’t know why. You never seemed to understand why she was worth saving. Except, maybe for in that one moment you did.”

“I gave my life? For her? For the scavenger girl?” He feels something break apart deep in the hollow of his chest and there is a terrible fear he cannot name.

“You can say her name,” says the stranger, softly.

He shakes his head. “I can’t.” He hiccups. “I can’t remember it.”

The tears come then, though there are no tears in this place. They shake him through his whole frame, and it is like he is a child again.

The man puts his arm around him, and pulls him to him, and lets him shake and sob and disgrace himself, and doesn’t speak a word. And the man without a mask is reminded so strongly of the smell of leather and ozone and of strong arms around him as his father rocked him to sleep. 

“Hush. It will be alright.”

*

There are no people in this place.

If there were, the man in the mask would have killed them.

And yet, there is a stranger sitting on the temple steps.

He is an old man, or maybe he is very young and there is something about him that is strange, at once familiar and sharp and new.

Perhaps he is a test. But the man in the mask has faced many tests.

He draws his saber.

The silence here is terrible. It swallows the hiss and spit of his saber, until it is no more than a ringing in his ears. Didn’t his blade have a colour once? Was it always the same dull grey of the sky, the temple, the desert?

It is so hard to remember now.

But the enemy is in front of him and he knows what to do with enemies. “Who are you? What brings you here?”

The man looks up. “A traveller. Just passing through.”

“This place is _mine!_ Its secrets are mine. You will not take them from me!” He swings his saber.

*

He killed the stranger.

Didn’t he?

Like he killed all the rest.

Good.

There is a man sitting on the temple steps.

But there are no people in this place.

The man in the mask realises he is on his knees.

The stranger rises.

“I’m going east,” he says. “If there is an east. There may be nothing. But I’m going to go see.”

There is no wind in this place, yet in the stranger's hand hand the grains of sand dance and spin, like stars. The stranger reaches down to him. “You can come with me, if you want.”

The man in the mask flinches away, gathering up as much sand as he can his fists, lest the stranger steal another grain of what rightfully belongs to him.

“No! This place is mine. It will give up its secrets and fill this hole in me. I will be a god.” 

The stranger nods sadly. “If I pass this way again, I’ll come and see you. I hope you find what it is you need.” Then he turns and walks away.

The man in the mask stays where he lies, counting the grains of sand in the desert, so that they may give up their secrets. 

And soon enough he remembers that he was always alone in this place.

*

There is no force here. No voices to guide him. No wind. No sky. Perhaps no horizon.

But there is a road heading east. How far he does not know.

And perhaps if he keeps trudging along that road, step after step, there will be the break of day.

**Author's Note:**

> Title and quote from Strange Meeting, by Wilfred Owen. 
> 
> I've been trying to write a medley of stories, and instead I've ended up with three doodlies, the first on doomed romantic relationships in western pop culture, the second on weird anime parent-child dynamics, so consider this the second movement of doodly number three 'dead villains", the first movement of which was "He finds again his last road"
> 
> Regarding afterlife, there is no hell in Star Wars, only a return to the cosmic force, so I wonder where they are. At one point Ben thought that perhaps as traitor to both light and dark, the cosmic force might simply just have left him stranded like a pebble on the beach when the tide goes out, but it was the wrong sort of thinking for the wrong sort of Ben, so I had to cut it.


End file.
